“Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?”
(Macbeth, act V sc. 1, lines 34–36)
Before I was sixteen years of age I was witness to a melancholy instance of the same effect of mixed passions upon a young person, who, however, did not die in consequence, at that time, but fell a victim some years afterwards to a seizure of the same kind, arising from causes intimately connected with agitation of mind. ↩
The view of the Venus of Medici instantly suggests the lines in the “Seasons” [the description of “Musidora bathing” in “Summer”]—
“… With wild surprise,
Hobhouse
As if to marble struck, devoid of sense,
A stupid moment motionless she stood:
So stands the statue that enchants the world.”
A still closer parallel to this stanza, and to Childe Harold, Canto IV stanzas XLIX, CXL, CXLI, CLX, CLXI, is to be found in Thomson’s Liberty, pt. IV lines 131–206, where the “Farnese Hercules,” the “Dying Gladiator,” the “Venus of Medici,” and the “Laocoön” group, are commemorated as typical works of art. —Editor ↩
Distinct from life, as being still the same.
—[MS.]
—working slow.
—[MS.]
Have dawned a child of beauty, though of sin.
—[MS.]
“… Duncan is in his grave:
Macbeth, act III sc. 2, lines 22, 23
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.”
—Editor ↩
No stone is there to read, nor tongue to say,
—[MS.]
No dirge—save when arise the stormy seas.
“But now I am cabined, cribbed,” etc.
Macbeth, act III sc. 4, line 24
—Editor ↩
Jacob Bryant (1715–1804) published his Dissertation concerning the War of Troy, etc., in 1796. See The Bride of Abydos, Canto II lines 510, sq., Poetical Works, 1900, III 179, note 1. See, too, Extracts from a Diary, January 11, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 165, 166,
“I have stood upon that plain [of Troy] daily, for more than a month, in 1810; and if anything diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity.”
Hobhouse, in his Travels in Albania, 1858, II 93, sq., discusses at length the identity of the barrows of the Troad with the tumuli of Achilles, Ajax, and Protesilaus, and refutes Bryant’s arguments against the identity of Cape Janissary and the Sigean promontory. —Editor ↩
All heroes who alive perhaps
—[MS. Alternative reading]
if still alive.
—and mountain-bounded
—[MS. Alternative reading]
and mountain-outlined plain.
“The whole region was, in a manner, in possession of the Salsette’s crew, parties of whom, in their white summer dresses, might be seen scattered over the plains collecting the tortoises, which swarm on the sides of the rivulets, and are found under every furze-bush.”
—Travels in Albania, 1858, II 116
See, too, for mention of “hundreds of tortoises” falling “from the overhanging branches, and thick underwood,” into the waters of the Mender, Travels, etc., by E. D. Clarke, 1812, Part II sect. I p. 96. —Editor ↩
—and land tortoise crawls.
—[MS. Alternative reading]
—their learned researches bear.
—[MS. Alternative reading]
This is a fact. A few years ago a man engaged a company for some foreign theatre, embarked them at an Italian port, and carrying them to Algiers, sold them all. One of the women, returned from her captivity, I heard sing, by a strange coincidence, in Rossini’s opera of L’Italiana in Algieri, at Venice, in the beginning of 1817.
[We have reason to believe that the following, which we take from the MS. journal of a highly respectable traveller, is a more correct account:
“In 1812 a Signor Guariglia induced several young persons of both sexes—none of them exceeding fifteen years of age—to accompany him on an operatic excursion; part to form the opera, and part the ballet. He contrived to get them on board a vessel, which took them to Janina, where he sold them for the basest purposes. Some died from the effect of the climate, and some from suffering. Among the few who returned were a Signor Molinari, and a female dancer named Bonfiglia, who afterwards became the wife of Crespi, the tenor singer. The wretch who so basely sold them was, when Lord Byron resided at Venice, employed as capo de’ vestarj, or head tailor, at the Fenice.”
—Maria Graham (Lady Callcot). Ed. 1832]
A comic singer in the opera buffa. The Italians, however, distinguish the buffo cantante, which requires good singing, from the buffo comico, in which there is more acting. —Ed. 1832. —Editor ↩
The figuranti are those dancers of a ballet who do not dance singly, but many together, and serve to fill up the background during the exhibition of individual performers. They correspond to the chorus in the opera.—Maria Graham. —Editor ↩
To help the ladies in their dress and lacing.
—[MS.]
It is strange that it should be the Pope and the Sultan, who are the chief encouragers of this branch of trade—women being prohibited as singers at St. Peter’s, and not deemed trustworthy as guardians of the harem.
“Scarcely a soul of them can read. Pacchierotti was one of the best informed of the castrati … Marchesi is so grossly ignorant that he wrote the word opera, opperra, but Nature has been so bountiful to the animal, that his ignorance and insolence were forgotten
